Friday, December 03, 2010

So, I am recently (as of one hour ago) the lucky recipient of an email forward from my friends' kid, age, oh, about 10. This one, thank collective-soul, is not a chain-mail where all my hairs will fall off if I don't forward it to all of you within 17 minutes of receipt. Whew.

Rather it's one of the more thoughtful ones, full of rhetorical questions of things that make you go gee... (Scroll to the bottom of the post to see it, if you're at all interested).

It's easy to smile and feel so much older and mature, and think, "ah, kids will be kids." But I got to thinking. back in the infancy of the Internet, weren't we all (or most) forwarding such emails to each other? Jokes, chain mails, recipes, random picture (and virus) laden emails that heavily taxed our 2GB-limited Hotmail accounts?

So perhaps our kids and our friends' kids are not so much showing their youth when it comes to these forwards, but rather this is a stage that all (or most) newbies to the internet must go through... a rite of passage, if you will.

Here's the email from my friend's kid, by the way, in case you're curious. :-)

If swimming is a good exercise to stay fit, Why are whales fat?

Why is the place in a stadium where people sit,called a STAND?

Why is it that everyone wants to go to heaven?But nobody wants to die?

Shall I say that there is racial discrimination evenIn chess as the white piece is moved first?

In our country, we have freedom of speech,Then why do we have telephone bills?

If money does not grow on trees thenWhy do banks have branches?

Why doesn't glue stick to its bottle?

Why do you still call it building whenit’s already built?

If it’s true that we are here to help others,What are others here for?

If you are not supposed to drink andDrive why do bars have parking lots?